When Morning Comes
by coffee shop poet
Summary: When the livelihood of a young spoiled woman comes to an end, she reluctantly enters into a tentative marriage with Eugene Sledge out of desperation. But what begins as a last resort becomes a struggle to keep the man sane...a man she has grown to love.
1. Prologue

_when morning comes  
(a working title)  
__by coffee shop poet_

* * *

Fate came to me broken.

It came to me on its last limb of hope and I, at first, wanted nothing to do with it. My life was already filled with a destiny I had chosen for myself long ago – to be a terrible flirt, to be chased and pursued and wanted until the end of my days. But I never wished to be caught, to be possessed by a name and a title, to settle into that cocoon of _security _that I had come to loathe so very much in my young years. I wished to be free of husbands and such dreary things of that nature – the little wife standing in the kitchen, an apron curving over a swollen belly, as she hums a sweet little tune of submission and careworn decay. Gazing out of her windowpane prison with such bittersweet longing and despair that only the housewife may encounter in her substandard conditions of existence. Such domestic ennui, that I had deemed in my day as the last legal form of slavery, was certainly _never _my idea of a life even to be taken into consideration, much less _wanted_.

And I _was _free.

Until _he _came along.

He quietly slipped his way into the scheme of things, nothing more than the silence that keeps to the walls in its physiscal form. There was no fanfare of confessed, undying love when he came to me, asking for my hand, to offer a place at his side. All he had to give to me was the anguished pieces of himself left over from the war, the ones that he managed to keep concealed from me until he could no longer bear the burden of such a mask.

Twice I refused him.

But when necessity and desperation called my name, it would be the first of many times that I would go to him to seek shelter from the raging storm.

Gentle Eugene Sledge. The sweetest man that ever breathed, on whom violence took its toll.

He never turned me away, not once.

* * *

**A/N - This is only the prologue. Please let me know what you think. Should I continue with this storyline? Anything I should change? Do tell me. I won't bite. :)**


	2. A Useless Man

_A/N: Before you chastise me for creating a Mary Sue, please understand that this story is about self-discovery. About learning that there is more to life than parties and being adored every minute of the day. About finding love in the most unexpected of places. It also deals with the effects of war in young men that come home from it destroyed, broken, soulless. Holding desperately to their sanity because it threatens to slip away from them._

_She will grow as she begins to understand. Also, flashbacks will be included about how Eugene and this girl met in the future chapters to come. :)_

* * *

When I was a little girl, days that were meant to be passed in child-like innocence, in sheer-eyed ignorance of the world and all of its inherent cruelties, were spent in preparation. For my future, mother always preached to me. Her long, painted finger waving in front of my face, as if to relate to me the gravity of my situation. I was to be instructed, to learn the intricate deposition of character expected of me, in order to attain ever elusive domestic bliss. All of this was carried out so that someday, in the very near future, I would be considered the epitome of the perfect _bride. _

Perhaps it is from this memory that my abhorrence for everything to do with marriage stems. I don't remember tea parties, discussing the weather and gossip that only little five year old girls would find interesting with my dolls, who I would have thought, in their stillness, were merely transfixed by my every word. Every droll turn of childish wit and humor that came across as brilliant in every way. Learning to cook replaced mud pies in the garden. Learning to sew replaced dresses with skirts which enticed me to twirl in them, to make the fabric dance around me like a halo of lace and frills. In place of friends, I had lessons in social graces and etiquette with girls I never related to in any way, as I viewed each and every one of them as little horrors with no exciting qualities to redeem them.

Of course, I was blind to my own defects in this undesirable trait. I, too, morphed into the same selfish model of deportment as the years wore on and adolescence imparted to me the courage to rebel against my mother's every desire for me to marry well. Her lessons were often thwarted by temper tantrums. Cups of tea which were ultimately upset by these fits of displeasure often stained mother's expensive doilies and table cloths. I burned perfectly good food just to spite her, stained dresses that she had wasted father's hard-earned money on to buy, and intentionally embarrassed her at parties as I grew old enough to attend them. Years of practice, which proved ultimately ineffective, on sewing also became a true instrument of sabotage. It was always my worst subject in lessons; my hands were unsteady, as was my nature to be restless, to crave freedom.

High regard in society was everything my mother wished for me.

And I dashed every one of those hopes to pieces as my reputation as a temperamental brat became more infamous while the years passed us by.

* * *

It has always been that, when I did not get my way, I would resort to days of silence. I prided myself upon the presence of mind to carry out such a difficult strike, to not to speak one word for the entire passage of a sun and a moon. Not a _flicker _of intent to converse, to remark, to answer questions. The inevitable pout of a little girl lodged in a grown woman's body, only altered to fit a certain air of dignity where sense was concerned.

So passed the first days of my imprisonment as his wife.

Imprisonment because I am miles away from any acquaintance, from any of my former admirers that had showered me with daily compliments and tokens of their adoration. This poor excuse for a man, who ghosts through the corridors of this house like some unhappy haunt, says nothing to me. Does not flatter me in even the simplest of forms, such as a favorable glance, an observation about how lovely I look in a dress or a certain color. Everything I ever learned in seducing a man has been wasted on this quiet, moping creature that I have been _encumbered _with.

Why, oh why did I ever accept him? I could have had any man of my choosing. Robbie Harding who loved to tangle his fingers in my hair when he'd pull me outside to steal a kiss from me in the pleasant darkness. Jacob Potter whose compliments ever sweetened my thoughts for him, ever sought and succeeded in earning my praises. And oh! Zachary Kirk. With the bluest eyes that put forget-me-nots to shame and a smile to _die _for if there was ever one.

And yet here I am. Sitting in the parlor, lounging in mind-numbing boredom with a tray of treacle tarts and sweetened tea that has only been glanced at once. In my muted rebellion, I have not looked on it since the housekeeper came in and left it on the coffee table. I simply remain in crossed-legged silence and watch the man outside through eyes that only seem to narrow even further as my surveillance of his activities draw on.

As the hour wears on, I come to the conclusion that what he seems to do every day, when he is not ambling aimlessly through the house as if he is searching for the lost half of his cognizance, is utterly _useless_. It is rather hard to explain, what perfectly good time he wastes, time that could have been spent more wisely on finding a job to support his wife and livelihood. I am not quite sure what it is that he does out there, even when he is in plain view of the windows and I can see for myself what sort of occupation he entertains.

But from my ignorant perspective, all the description I may afford to his goings-on is surface-value at best. When he has not disappeared from the garden or the back of the house, he is often drifting from place to place with a pencil behind his ear, that _ridiculous_ pipe dangling from the side of his mouth, hands in his pockets to complete the look of uselessness that he emulates on a daily basis. He takes in the sight of every living thing that surrounds this house. The grass, the roses that I have no interest in pruning, the dirt and the bees and the butterflies like little shards of beauty embedded into the vibrant-colored blossoms. He carries with him a pocket-sized book of notes, into which I can only assume he stores the thoughts that are meant only for himself to read. They are certainly never shared with _me_; I know no more about what diction he might be keeping in that leather-bound notebook of his than the housekeeper, than the butterflies that carry on from flower to flower, glinting in the sunlight as if they are made entirely from glass.

After three days of watching him, and of course the better half of the day that I have squandered on trying understand this rubbish of his, I have had enough. I uncross my legs. This shall end today, tonight, as soon as I may bring about its demise. With renewed objective, I pass the treacle tarts, the sweet tea, the rows and rows of books that wait for me to open them. The housekeeper pauses on her way out the back door, carrying a wicker basket of washed bedclothes outside to be left on the line and dry in the breeze. Out of the corner of my eye, I see her shake her head, as if she understands him better than I do…and that I am nothing more but a damning influence on this house.

As if the ennui is not condemning _enough_ in of itself.

Outside, the heat rushes forth to envelope me in its smothering cocoon the moment I step onto its territory. There is no escaping it; even inside the air is as hot and heady as breath against bare skin. It is the sort of weather that entices couples into their beds, inspired by the friction of the summer's day to do nothing more but tumble through the sheets and pay homage to the divinity of pulsating warmth. It is also weather that can turn even the most dedicated of optimistic women into simpering half-versions of themselves, sweethearts into ogres, and break those who have sworn silence so that they might speak again.

Today, he is staring up at a tree. His dark crimson hair intermittently brightens into something like rubies caught in the light as the mottled shade breaks into morsels of shedding sun and tree-bough shadows. The notebook tucked away into his palm remains idle, as does the pencil behind his ear. It is as if he is on the verge of capturing great thought, of stumbling into discovery. Of unlocking the path to unprecedented genius.

On the other hand, he could just be lost again in his own brooding. Matters of reasoning are unnecessary as they both lead to his standing there, eyes tilted up to the great, thick tree in his front yard as if it is something novel to behold. Something he's never seen before.

I cross my arms, standing behind him, waiting for him to heed my existence. At the very least, my presence. When it becomes certain that he will not move without stimulation on my part, I clear my throat and his head snaps toward me, eyes wide, like he's been wrenched out of the grasp of some terrible nightmare. He sees that it is only me standing there and the moment of vulnerability settles into equilibrium.

Undeterred, I advance on him, moving into the empty slot of grass and shade at his side. His gaze is fixed on that damned tree again and I can't help but begin to wonder if I've tied myself to a loon. "Might I ask what it is _exactly _that you do out here all day?"

His eyes are soft when they retreat from the hardness of the tree's structure and gloss over me, a tentative, testing glance. They remain on my face, undeterred by the intrusive manner in which I have come to him. The corners of his mouth quirk, as if the spell of laughter does not quite take root, not tempted enough to stay by the thought that flits too quickly through him. "Lookin' 'round is all," he replies, second nature, as easy as staring that tree. It requires no effort on his part, and yet there is a sadness that taints the simple words that I can't quite comprehend.

"Let me see that." I reach for the notebook curled into his palm before he can answer. Before he has any chance to try and stop me. The aggressive movement catches him off guard, and as I turn away from him, the resonance of a short breath and a step backwards is all I hear.

The leather is softened by the sweat that beaded down into it from his hands. Thumbprints and eraser shavings still cling to the burgundy-brown surface. I run my fingers over the covering for only a moment. What secrets hide behind these unassuming binds?

Before I can unearth them from even the first page, my efforts are thwarted by the hand that comes flying, razor-sharp quick, from somewhere beside me. I didn't even see him coming, didn't hear his footsteps, but there he is, standing at my side. A little too breathless and a little too disheveled. The look in his eyes is almost wild, but it's a gentle wilderness, the manifestation of fear in its mildest form.

"_Please_," he mutters, holding the notebook protectively against his chest, caged by his hands, his delicate wrists. "Don't…don't do that again. All right? These are very, _very _private. I don't want nobody but me lookin' at 'em. Is that clear?"

I feel my eyes constricting automatically. The reign of defiant silence seems to remember itself and returns full-force, if only for a moment.

"Charlotte," he is resorting to entreaty, a drawl that's both deep and musical. He doesn't look desperate, but there's something about the way his voice cracks and curls into itself, defensive, that betrays the impassive mask of his face. "Don't you go lookin' through this again, you hear me?"

He chides me gently. And it is the first time, since I met Eugene Sledge, that I feel something more than just indifference toward him.

I watch him stroll slowly away, a man buried in his own thought, and I entertain, all at once, a _curiosity_ that rises up strong from within me.

* * *

Across the way, there is a lonely housewife, just as starved and desperate for human interaction as I am. Beyond Eugene's somber presence at the table or in the next room over, the housekeeper's knowing looks and suspicious prowling in the background, I have nothing else to entertain me but this poor creature, this victim of slave-driven matrimony.

Sylvia Lawrence is the typical woman that has been crushed my oppression, having nothing more to do throughout the day but wait for her husband to return from work. Her most exciting diversions include washing dishes in the kitchen and sitting down at breakfast after she is left to her own devices to read the newspaper. If anything, she is quite up to date on politics, but I tire so easily of the subject that it drops quickly whenever we have tea together or are in any way drawn to each other's company.

Today, it is sweet tea and honey biscuits, but I am altogether too moved by frustration with my own useless husband to try the bread. I stir my tea listlessly, sighing here and there to convey my disapproval, and the woman across the table from me smiles a little, disheartened perhaps at having to remedy her loneliness with such wretched society.

"What is it today then, Charlotte?"

"Nothing," I reply. "Absolutely nothing. The man is an utter _bore_. Perhaps if he were more handsome, I would be able to tolerate his lack of humor."

"You will get used to it, my dear," the older woman assures me, rearranging her doilies almost absently. A breeze laps at our skin, sighs against our ears, on its way through the quaint little porch."You must give yourself time."

"I don't _want _to give it time," I sigh and reach for my tea again, but do not drink from it. "I want to escape this dull place. You are the _only_ person that rescues me from certain death of the _tedium_ that I suffer, day by day. Morning, noon and _night_."

Again, another half-crescent smile. "Marriage is always a life-altering change for any young woman. It is quite tame compared to the life you have been used to living. Going from being showered with praise and compliments to not even a glance to be spared for you is certainly something you must learn to deal with. You are not exempt simply because you and your match are not on fire for one another, unlike other partners that are blinded by exquisitely burning love to see the forest for the trees. You have the advantage in your situation."

I scoff in reply. How _absurd _she can sometimes be. And to think she is the older, wiser one, having ten years over me, possessing the insight and experience which are supposed to enlighten her! "How is being ignored and avoided like the _plague_ any sort of advantage?"

"You are privy to his both his flaws and virtues as a human being because you are not utterly and soulfully in love with him," she says. "And he, in turn, is aware of yours. You are both in a stage of careful observation, where each person is measuring the other and deciding whether or not there is any hope for affection in the near future."

"The only thing I love about him is the fact that his parents keep me out of poverty," I retort scathingly. "Do you know he will not even _attempt _to find work? He wanders the garden all morning, all afternoon, and does nothing else but write in that little notebook of his. Won't even let me look at the thing! The only reason we have a housekeeper is because his father insists on paying for one until we are settled in enough to pay our own expenses. I fear the old man will be paying for us for the rest of his life; his son is _completely_ idle and useless."

At this, Sylvia cannot hide her ardent disapproval. Her expression hardens quickly, like fast-drying paint on a blank wall of emotions. "Charlotte, you should be _ashamed_ of yourself," she speaks this in almost a whisper. As if it is forbidden, as if I have denied the existence of God and religion before her without care as to how such views would affect her opinion of me. _Recklessly_.

"Why? He has done nothing to prove his worth otherwise."

"But he _has_ proved himself," Sylvia remarks gravely. "And he has had to sacrifice his innocence and his sanity to do so. The boy has almost lost his humanity, he hangs onto it by a thread, and I will not tolerate your selfish nature any longer if you are to insult him so thoughtlessly. I can understand your boredom, your frustration at being ignored, but Charlotte I will not simply sit back and allow you to think you have married a useless man."

"What on earth are you on about?"

"I am not supposed to breathe a word of this to you, but if you are too blinded by your own selfish nature to recognize that your husband is in pain, then it seems I must break my promise for your own sake. And _especially _his."

I wait for this stunning revelation as the woman steels herself inwardly, harboring to herself this detrimental information for only a moment longer as her eyes drag across the scenery, toward our home across the street. It seems quiet, nothing stirring within. Eugene is not on the front lawn. Everything is empty, almost adhering to the look of abandonment.

"Eugene fought in the war, dearest," she tells me, her eyes heavy with unshed tears, as if the task of having to verify this truth makes her heart break. "Doc Sledge says he's only just returned."

The war? I know nothing of the war; the meaning of this great unveiling has no effect on me as a result. But it seems that these words are rivaled by nothing more profound, nothing more haunting than what she has uttered to me, imparted to my knowledge for safe-keeping. When she stands, hand resting softly on the back of her chair, she does not even spare me a glance as she opens the screen door to her house and disappears inside.

There is only a renewed interest of this private sorrow that everyone but me seems to be experiencing. That everyone, except me, seems to comprehend in this directionless figure that I have come to call husband.

All I know now is that I must find that journal. A side effect for boredom that infects me with this curiosity, perhaps. I have never cared much before about the complexities of a man's nature. They are such simple creatures. They respond to beauty and bodies and stolen moments in the darkness. Eugene does not respond to any of these things. He is an unknown in the back of my head. I _must _strip the anonymous shadows from his identity in order to scourge this insufferable ignorance from me.

I have come to find that what was at first only indifference has transformed into an urgent need – I _must_ know what he keeps so secret from me in those marked pages of his.

Tonight. I look across the street, squinting through the gold veil of sunlight.

Only the cover of darkness may enlighten me.

* * *

_I don't own The Pacific, nor is this in any way intended to disrespect the memory of Eugene Sledge._


	3. The First Attack

_A/N: Ignore any mistakes. I'll fix it later. Right now I'm just so tired and I need to go to sleep. Sorry about the end there...it gets a little squidgy cause I got tired and just pretty much said screw it by then. I'll pretty it up a little more later so, if you want, you can come back and check and see how I changed it._

_Enjoy,  
coffee shop poet. _

_

* * *

_

Night comes in on wings so silent that I almost don't hear its descent. The house is full of it by the time I steal out of my room, with only my night dress and bare feet to separate my skin from the all-seeing shadows. The hall is empty except for the darkness that penetrates everything, even instruments of light that are now extinguished as their master has gone to bed. One foot in front of the other, as quietly as I a moving body may be in such exquisite, almost painful, silence.

His door is closed, but not locked. Easily it opens for me, the wood creaking softly as my weight pushes on its hinges. I still, an instantaneous reaction. The bed does not move and no sound emits from its folds. Is it safe to push onward? I can hardly risk being caught, especially as the man whose privacy I am trespassing is much too unpredictable for such a mission. For all I know, I could be treading on a temper that is silver-thin glass. Egg shells that break under the softest touch and beneath…who knows what lies beneath that unassuming exterior?

My ears are peeled for any sort of movement, but there is nothing. Only the crickets outside, the lazy swish of the curtains that are being prodded by an inquisitive breeze stealing through here and there. I can barely hear him breathe. Is he even alive? Part of me is excited by the thought of him lying there, dead, and it had not even been my conscience to suffer for his passing! I would be _free _again. A bird that has grown back her wings by some miracle by God's hand.

No such phenomenon has taken place here. He moves in his bed, the mattress shifting under his slender body as he finds a more comfortable spot. I can feel my face fall, plummet into something of a most dispassionate frown; at least I know now what it should feel like if such liberation was close enough to touch, for the taking.

At long last, I deem the passage into his bedroom safe. Nothing has moved in minutes, not even me. The pads of my feet whisper small noises of impending intrusion into the floorboards, softly warning them of what's to come. It is utter darkness in here. Not even the half-cracked windows and pools of moonlight in the corner can clear the path for me, and so I grope through it, eyes searching for any sort of illumination to follow. It feel as if I have been wandering for hours by the time I reach the small chest of drawers, calmly and quietly sitting at his bedside, unaware of my intentions to molest it and uncover the secrets of its master.

But it has only been long, agonizing seconds.

In the midst of unwavering concentration, the kind that denies the existence of everything but one thought, one focus, I have forgotten to breathe softly. When I catch myself, I believe it is too late. I clutch the knobs of the drawers with white-knuckled hands, my lungs heavy with air yet to be released, my heart swollen with blood yet to be pumped. Every last mechanical aspect of my being has stopped, as if preparing for explosion, for disaster, for everything and nothing all at the same time. It expects a voice, the lamp on the surface of this chest to flicker on suddenly. It expects _something, _but what it receives is nothing.

The realization that I am safe, as I have thwarted certain doom twice, allows a sort of arrogance to permeate my restless hands. I wish to know what it is harbored within those pages _now. _A deadly secret? The memoirs of a monster? The concept of being so close makes me impatient and I pull the top drawer out too quickly. Behind a stoic chest, my heart nearly explodes as the knob drops out of my anxious hands and lands with a dull, sickening _thud_ against the skeleton of the structure…

And something, suddenly, soars through the darkness toward me.

Before I know what I have done, what dire mistake I have made, a body topples over me. Pins me to the ground, a prey fallen to her predator. A primal scream echoes off the drowsy walls, making them come alive with the sound of a war cry that makes my blood run cold within veins turned to ice. I can't breathe. Why can't I breathe? Oh God, have my lungs burst? Have they caved in on themselves in the panic? And such pressure, like the crushing depths of an entire ocean colliding with my brittle bones…where is it all coming from?

My fingers pry at something obstructing the flow of air in my throat. And there, I find myself clawing at hands that seem to glow in the moonlight. Pale as snow, as milk, as the faceless stars in a foreboding sky. The epiphany is sudden, sharp as knives in its cruelty, and everything inside of me begins to scream as it is doused in mortal fear. _He is choking me._

"Eugene!" The words form in my head, but they don't reach my mouth. It is dry, sucked clean of all ability to speak by the hands that throttle all sound from my lungs. _Please, please let me go! It's me! It's Charlotte! Let go of me! I can't breathe!_

Something like the sounds of animals dying, of death being coaxed out of me, slips ever so softly through the crushing manacles of hands around my neck. Fingers prying at unmoving hands, nails scratching unconquerable skin, I am a prisoner to my own slow extinction.

Then, without warning, the hands free me.

Relief pervades me in the form of a bone-shattering cough. My lungs are small earthquakes, nothing but shuddering plates caught within a fragmented earth, my skin vibrating with the motions. Feeling returns to my throat, everything sore, everything aching and still recovering from the shock.

Out of the darkness, Eugene's hands are like white vultures. They perch on my cheekbones as if they are the boughs of a dead tree, a sapling suffocated by the unrelenting desert. I can feel his hands trembling uncontrollably. He can't dictate the motions of his own being. It is like a demon has been shelled from him, torn out by its sheltered roots of Hell, and all that's left of him is the afterthought of exorcism. A green, empty husk.

Underneath his cresting exhalations, those breaths melting away to bare spasms of panic, I can hear him muttering to himself. Over and over. Private thoughts that I'm not supposed to hear. _It was a dream. It wasn't real. All a dream, nothing real. I'm home…I'm here. I was dreaming._

His fingertips trace me, as if trying to make me real to him. Like he's trying to imprint himself into my reality, where there is only the unruffled quiet as it sinks back into drowsy half-sleep, unconcerned with the cries of unraveled humanity. Indifferent silence, not peppered with backdrop rounds of bullets, of explosive dreams that stifle all hope for sleep.

"I'm sorry, Charlotte," his voice slithers through my hair, snakes in the underbrush of Eden. I want to pull away. What if this is only a trick? A lure with promises of downy words and gentle reassurance after such violence? "I…I didn't mean to. You gotta understand…I'm so sorry. Please, don't cry."

I don't realize I'm crying myself until he alludes to the fact, makes it known to me. With a violently quivering hand, I reach up to touch my face, finding it sopping wet. Numbness still floods me. It will be a while until the feeling underneath can return.

Instinct pushes through the apathy film. I shove him away, as hard as strength will allow, making a mad dash for the safety of the half open door. It seems like miles away. Universes separate me from that goddamn door. Everything that had led me into this room now seems like hollow retrospect. A big, stupid idea that I should never have allowed to grow into action. I scuttle for that door, miles off, but the monster behind me grabs my foot. By now I am relying solely on reflex to escape unscathed; the palm of my hand comes in contact, hard, with his face. I hear him cry out in surprise; this is my only chance.

I run.

A few seconds are all I can spare to abscond. My slick hands grapple for purchase on the floor to launch me back onto my feet, but they're too wet with tears and sweat to give way to any hold. Beneath me, my legs aren't waiting for unreliable fingers on a flat surface. They start kicking, groping for their own possession of velocity, and before I know where I am, where I'm going, I'm flying through the door, legs pumping beneath me, the pads of my feet stinging from slapping against the cold, hard surface of the floor. There's footsteps behind me. He's coming.

Over my shoulder, I glance to find my enemy, try to place him, but there's no one there. Still, the footsteps throb in my ears. In a matter of seconds, my pathway to freedom is cut off, the banister at the stairs eclipsed by some enormous black shape. Some formless thing that grows arms, a chest and a face as it comes closer to me, backs me into a corner.

I'm trapped.

"You _have _to listen to me, Charlotte-"

"I don't gotta listen to a thing you say!" I scream, pushing against his chest with every last shred of willpower I have available to me with shaking limbs and wobbling knees.

"Please," he begs me, his fingers fastening to my shoulders, his dark eyes glassy with entreaty, with the stilted growth of hope that he somehow knew would never last. They're all I see as I stare up at him, my chest heaving, breath coming too short and too shallow for me to feel like I'm getting any air at all. "I was dreamin'. I didn't know what I was doin'!"

"How can you say you didn't know what you were doin', huh? You choked me! You were tryin' to kill me you sorry bastard! Tryin' to get rid of me!"

Something clouds his gaze. It's black and wild, but not the unmindful sort of wilderness that I'd seen in them before, the kind that you'd see in a young colt galloping across the endless plains on his uncertain legs. No, this is the blackness that lines the mouth of Hell itself. That glistens red and orange against the gates of eternal dole. It's downright murderous the way he's looking at me, searching me, looking for everything but what he's seeing there.

But around those soulless black spheres, where all life seems to be sucked into their void, there is sorrow, there is regret. He's pulled in two different directions. Torn into halves that will never fit into one another's mold, too many differences that will never be resolved, too many ideas that clash like the swords of battle.

I'm looking into the eyes of a killer that never wants to kill again.

His silence is unnerving. I feel my skin crawl beneath my nightgown, beneath his bone-crushing grip. "Charlotte…_please. _You gotta believe me…I'd never hurt you on purpose. I'd never…"

My eyes flit over his face again. Sincerity of the deepest kind. It's the only kind of emotion that I can recognize in a face, besides the obvious predatory shade that fills the miles of emptiness in his stare. I'm practiced in finding it. Seeing if a man is telling the truth when he tells me I'm pretty, tells me I'm swell. It's shallow business, but it's the only sort of business I know.

I still can't breathe and something burns as it trails down my face.

Downstairs, footsteps resonate off the walls. They're on the edge of desperate. "Mr. Sledge!" They call, those footsteps, attached to the voice of the housekeeper. "Mr. Sledge, what's goin' on up there? I heard screamin'!"

His eyes remain on my face, still cruel and black, still merciless as stone. "Everything's all right, Lettie. Don't you worry, all right? You go on back to bed now. Everything's just fine."

At last, I am freed from his unblinking gaze and his head pivots, chin resting against his shoulder as he waits on the sound of her retreating footsteps.

All I remember is that my head felt light…

"Charlotte?"

And then everything receded into shores of oblivion.

* * *

It is so dark…so dark that I can't tell what world I'm in.

He's pacing when cognizance comes rushing back at me, all at once. I can hear him, his body shifting to and fro, a pale wave of confusion moving fluid through the shadows. His hands are wringing, the sound of callus chafing against the silence. He pauses, the hands halting too, only to slide down his face, quelling the bundles of nerves that won't quiet down.

My chances of escape have dwindled. He stands between me and that door and there's only so much room in the middle. When his back is to me, I sit up, the blanket he's throw over me sliding off my chest. It's enough movement for him to spot me and as soon as he turns, his breath caught in his chest, it's as if I've been turned to stone by his gaze that settles on me, rippling through the gloom to find me.

For a long moment, he simply stares. As if spellbound, I stare back, unable to look away, to turn away. At last, he takes in a breath, his hands lying in awkward disarray at his sides. "What were you doin' in my room?"

Despite the fear of not knowing what he would do, what's coming next, I am instantly defensive. "None of your business."

"It is my business if you're poking through my room like that," he replies, calmly as he can manage. "I coulda killed you…"

"If I would have known you were goin' to try to throttle me, I never woulda taken the risk."

"I…I didn't mean to," he repeats, as if this is supposed to just explain everything away, an excuse that holds no water against the blatant truth. "You don't understand."

"Hell I don't! I should have you arrested you old loony bastard!" I reply, challenging him, knowing fully well that nothing good should come of it, but I could care less at the moment. My _life's _been threatened by this madman. I've gotta try to fight back. "Trying to kill your own-"

"_Shut up_!" He approaches suddenly, hands shaking, eyes wide and taking on that murderous look again. I shrink back, all former resolve to defend myself against this bewildered monster taken from me in the form of intimidation, of an order. "Shut up! Can't you see I'm trying to tell you somethin'? I'm not right in the head, Charlotte! Somethin's missin' up there and I can't get it back! It's gone! Gone forever! Don't you get it you spoiled brat? There's no goin' back!"

He's so close that I can feel his body heat radiating off his skin, reaching out to touch me, to see if I'm real. The sensation of my body being drowned in its own fear is jarring; my head begins to spin.

He's searching her eyes. Hers are fearful, his are wide and wild.

"I'm leavin'," I tell him. "You can't make me stay."

"You ain't goin' nowhere, sweetheart," he seethes. "You're staying here. You belong to me now. You hear me? You're my wife and I have the right to keep you here as long as I wish!

I bolt forward. The door is so close…if only I could just push forcefully past him and be rid of this nightmare. "I belong to no one, Eugene Sledge," I retort viciously as reach for the door. "Not even **you**."

But it doesn't budge as I try the handle.

"There's no getting' out of here," he replies smoothly, evenly. "It's locked tight and I've got the key."

I back into the door. "You let me out of here, you crazy son of a bitch. You let me outta here or I'll-"

"What? You'll what? Kill me? Go ahead. Do it!"

He gets up, crossing the room, standing before me, eyes black and cold as water underneath a night sky. "Do it. I want you to."He takes my hands and circles them around his neck. I can feel his Adam's apple bobbing beneath my palms. There's tears in his eyes, gathering in the corners, little droplets of dew. "Go on then. _Do it_!"

I take my hands away from his neck, the warmth from his skin fading from mine, and watch the tears pool, finally falling down his cheeks. In the moonlight, they look like silver. He's searching me again, looking for acceptance, for anything worth keeping, for anything worth fighting for. But he looks weary, like he's too tired for the struggle anymore. He backs away and rummages through the pocket stitched into the breast of his pajama shirt.

With trembling hands, he gives me the key. "I guess this is goodbye then."

Without even a second glance to spare for him, I take the key and shove it through the lock, struggling to open the door. I rush out into the hallway, not bothering to look behind me, afraid he will come after me again. Escape is so close. I can almost feel the grass tickling my feet as I dash across the front lawn.

But no sooner do I reach the last boundary between me and that grass, that liberation, I am stilled. My hand won't move and all I can think of is those tears that drifted before his eyes, embedded lines of liquid salt into the pallor of his face. The look of utter decimation there was unmistakable. He had been completely sincere.

For a moment, a battle ensues.

And when my hand falls away from that knob, somewhere, inside of me, a cheer for victory rises up from the depths of my conscience.

* * *

_I don't own The Pacific, nor is this in any way intended to disrespect the memory of Eugene Sledge._


End file.
